Environment ignored in CMP

Mumbai: The Maha Vikas Aghadi’s Common Minimum Programme (CMP) lacks an environmental agenda such as saving Aarey or preventing the large-scale destruction of mangroves for development projects, which were earlier promised by the Shiv Sena and Congress, activists have alleged.

Environmentalists have demanded a meeting with prominent party leaders to discuss the matter of declaring Aarey a forest.

Stalin Dayanand, project director of NGO Vanas-hakti, highlighted that the Sena had a separate section for saving the environment in its manifesto but failed to address the same in the CMP.

“It was extremely disappointing. The Sena had mentioned saving mangroves in its manifesto while the Congress had stated that it will work towards saving the environment before the polls. They should have highlighted how they would bring in development pro-jects without destroying the environment,” he said.

As a reminder of the promises made by the Sena, NCP and Congress, members of the Aarey Conservation Group (ACG) went to the oath-taking ceremony with a banner urging them to the car shed of metro line 3 from Aarey Colony.

“We will keep pursuing the three parties to move the metro car shed from Aarey and declare it as a forest. It was a pre-poll promise by the Sena and NCP. The Congress, too, had opposed car shed. Th-ere are still several trees intact inside Aarey which MMRC claims have been cut,” said Radhika Jhave-ri, a member of the ACG.

Group members have requested the parties for a site inspection inside Aar-ey and a meeting to discuss the issue of declaring Aarey a forest to prevent development work inside.

Meanwhile, fishermen groups of Maharashtra said that their plight had been ignored by all three parties. “Due to cyclones, we have incurred losses of more than '2,500 crore and yet, none of the parties have spoken about our welfare in the CMP,” said Kiran Koli, secretary of the Maharashtra Machhimar Kruti Samiti.